Emancipation

“Reform and opening” started from the top with the seminal leadership transition from Mao to Deng. Deng Xiaoping heralded China’s boom in late 1978 when he called for experiments with “economic democracy” and “emancipation” from orthodox ideas. But the boom was not simply a top-down, state-orchestrated phenomenon. In fact, the biggest contribution of the state, especially in the first phase of growth, was to get out of the way. Farmers were liberated from collectives, sparking a wildfire of capitalism in the countryside. Urban markets and industry were freed to “grow out of the plan,” making profits on surplus production and creating powerful incentives for rapid growth.

The Birth of Private Workers, The Death of People’s Communes

One Child Policy Stimulated Growth

People Who Fall Behind Will Be Beaten

Deng Understood That the World Had Changed

Deborah Davis

Professor of Sociology, Yale University

Deborah S. Davis (Ph.D. Boston University, 1979) is a Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Her primary teaching interests are historical and comparative sociology, inequality and stratification, contemporary Chinese society, and methods of fieldwork. Davis is currently a member of the National Committee on US China Relations and in 2004 helped launch the Yale China Health Journal. At Yale she has served as Director of Academic Programs at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Chair of the Department of Sociology, Chair of the Council of East Asian Studies, Director of Graduate Studies in both East Asian Studies and Sociology, Member of the Publications Committee for Yale Press, co-chair of the Women’s Faculty Forum and Member of the Tenure Appointments Committee for the Social Sciences. Past publications have analyzed the politics of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese family life, social welfare policy, consumer culture, property rights, social stratification and occupational mobility. In 2008 Stanford University Press will publish Creating Wealth and Poverty in Post-Socialist China, co-edited with Wang Feng. Currently she is completing a monograph entitled A Home of Their Own, a study of the social consequences of the privatization of real estate in urban China.

I don't have all the figures in my head but, of course, people are factory owners and shop owners, China is a private economy. In fact, it has a higher level of private ownership than most European countries, it's not that much lower than the United States, rather, quite comparable. So, yes. It's a capitalist China. And they got there, I wouldn't say gradually, but over time. It happened in different places and in different dimensions, let's say. But, the changes were extremely radical. In 1983, they walk away from the communes. I mean, that's unbelievable! The end. No more commune, no more brigade, no more team. You're on your own. I'm actually dumbfounded when people say, "There was no big bang in China." I don't know what they mean. For 800 million people, it was a huge bang and, nationally, it only took two years. And, in certain communities, it was six weeks. The commune's there, the commune's gone. Now, every single household is going to contract to the state for their grain. Instantly, eight hundred million tenant farmers. Wow, that's huge! And that's why I emphasize this self-reliance, as well as strong family, that was the foundation on which this growth is built. They didn't lose a harvest. Immediately, productivity was higher. Until the economic reform changes in urban China, in '86, the urban-rural [income] gap was falling. The people in the countryside were quick to figure out how capitalism was going to work for them. So, I think that was a huge bang and we see it. And then, of course, there were other bangs, but that one was the most dramatic.